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Saturday, January 1, 2011

Happy New Year, everyone! Thanks to all for making 2010 a great year for us. As we enter our third calendar year in business, we thought you might want to take a look back on a few of our highlights from the past year:

* In February, we hosted Japanese kawaii ambassador Misako Aoki for a meet & greet with over 100 local Lolitas. Parts of this event later made it onto Japanese TV!

* That same month, we attended the Tokyo Fashion Festa at the Fashion Institute of Technology, which showcased several of our brands (and one of our future shop assistants!).

* In March and April, we hosted our first ever worldwide photo contest, guest-judged by Misako Aoki and Akira, model for KERA magazine. We received hundreds of entries!

* Shortly thereafter, we opened our web site photo gallery to show off some of the photos we'd been taking and that our customers were sending us, often unsolicited. We love getting photos!

* In June, we took a business trip to Japan - but we focused the trip on you, bringing you inside looks at the stores operated by many of the brands we carry, including personalized video messages from the brands themselves. These shop tours ended up being some of our most popular blog features, as many of these stores are rarely photographed.

* In October, we celebrated our New York store's first year in business with special anniversary prints from both Angelic Pretty and PUTUMAYO. (Our web site had already celebrated its anniversary a few months earlier, but quietly.)

* Still in October (it was a big month for us!), we took part in the F.I.T. Lolita panel and tea party, attended by over 300 local Lolitas, press including the New York Times, and well-wishers.

* More October - we began a new tradition of bringing you video updates from our store with our own shop tour in the style of those we did from Japan. We now try to show off all our new stuff in video every week or two, and we'll be expanding that in the future!

* In November, NHK World visited us to film an episode of "Tokyo Fashion Now", which aired last month.

* Throughout the year, we blew through 1,000, then 2,000, then 3,000 "likes" on our Facebook page. As we enter 2011, we're within shouting distance of 4,000! Join us there!

Thanks to everyone who has supported us over the past year, and we hope we brought you a little joy too. Let's work together to make 2011 even better!

Upcoming Order Schedule

The following is our approximate schedule for future orders we plan to place with our brands, subject to change at any time. If you are interested in special ordering an item, you can use this as a guide for when to order. We recommend ordering 1-2 weeks in advance. Please email us to start a special order.